


Breathe

by Eilinelithil



Series: We Three [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Stargate Universe
Genre: AU, Aftermath, Angst, Character Death, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Science Fiction, Smut, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-23 11:02:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23710462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eilinelithil/pseuds/Eilinelithil
Summary: As the Lucian Alliance attack Icarus Base, Doctor Rush makes the decision that dialing back to Earth is too dangerous, though that may not at all be his reason for attempting to dial the ninth chevron, persuaded by Eli, and by something Belle had said to him previously, he substitues Earth for Icarus, and the connection is made. In spite of hurrying to urge Belle to the 'Gate room and through the 'Gate, neither he, nor anyone else believes that Belle actually made it on board Destiny...Thanks to xiolaperry for helping me to find a name for the series.
Relationships: Belle (Once Upon a Time)/Nicholas Rush
Series: We Three [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1707667
Comments: 12
Kudos: 10





	1. Destiny

**Author's Note:**

> So, I had this insane idea... rewrite the whole of Stargate: Universe as a series of Rushbelle fics. This is the first. Obviously it's not going to be canon, in fact, ladies and gentlemen, canon has long since left the building - although hopefully not so much that people won't recognise the show as the backbone of what goes on here. This crazy idea was inspired by my one shot (ahem) Monthly Rumbelling fiction, and sits squarely somewhere in FTL between that 'Verse and the canon SGU'Verse.

Frozen.

Belle clung to the side of the computer desk beside the huge glowing _vertical_ puddle that had whooshed into being the moment Rush had completed the dialing sequence. Debris fell from the ceiling, and around the room, random explosions took out power lines, and parts of the wall, and machinery that she had no _clue_ as to its function. The longer the bombardment continued the more frantic and chaotic it became around her. She knew she should do as Rush had insisted… follow the others through the Stargate. She still felt the urgent pressure, the tug on her hands as he held them a moment before he mounted the ramp.

But the prospect of the unknown…

If not for the sudden whine of overload of the computer she might have stood there until the explosion of the planet’s core; been vaporized in an instant, but the sound broke her paralysis, and then with the others, her small carry-all slung over her shoulder, she all but ran up the sloping metal ramp, broke the surface of the puddle, and fell into darkness.

Or semi-darkness, she realized as she opened her eyes, and tried to move as someone’s hand hooked around her arm and dragged aside from the direct path of the glowing Stargate. The chaos didn’t end just because she’d left Icarus; they all had. They brought the chaos with them.

She tried to stand, and winced, letting out a cry that no one heard amid the noise already building in the… what was it, a room? It didn’t look like a room. It didn’t _feel_ like a room. It was more like a vault… metallic. Strange. She scuttled backwards to press her back to the corner, a dark corner, and grasped her ankle with both hands where the pain was. Had she stepped wrong? Landed wrong? She closed her eyes and put her head back, thinking through all the events of the past two days, since Doctor Rush and General O’Neill had turned up in her lecture hall and whisked her away to _this_.

_…It wasn’t exactly an unpleasant sensation. One moment she was standing in the lecture hall beside Doctor Rush and General O’Neill, and the next… surrounded by the most intense light she could imagine, which slowly faded, leaving spots floating in the air before her eyes, the way they would after looking too long at the sun without shades on, but around her, as her vision refocussed, she saw the darkened, blue lit, gray interior of… well… she couldn’t figure out what she was seeing, nor where she was._

_A sudden wave of dizziness swept over her, and she staggered slightly as she tried to straighten herself before the warmth of slender but strong arms slipped around her to grasp both her upper arms supportively and in the next moment, warm breath passed over the space beside her ear, and Rush’s voice, low and with a hint of amusement purred in her ear…_

_*_

_…She met his eyes, hers narrowed, and bristled still further at the smirk she saw in his. He knew he had her interest. She’d given herself away and he was using it to lord it over her.. Damn the man, but worse - and she hoped he hadn’t caught her out in this as well - she couldn't help but find him attractive. In spite of his scruffy appearance, and his two or three day growth of stubble, his eyes were darkly brooding and full of mystery, and the verbal sparring they were engaged in was filling her with an ache of want that would be a lie to deny to herself. Add to all of that the old cliche that smart was sexy, and she knew she was in big trouble._

_However, she’d be damned if she was going to let the arrogant bastard dictate what she was going to do…_

_*_

_“…Miss French,” he said by way of greeting, and stepped aside slightly, gestured to her to come in._

_“That’s Doctor French, and...” she said as she brushed past him. He palmed the door control and turned to face her, just as she slapped the file folder against his chest, “You’re wrong…”_

_*_

_…Belle felt dizzy with the taste of his skin, salt and sweet and bitter, all at the same time, like cinnamon sugar. She gasped as she felt his fingers on her thigh, the light pull of his hand against her leg, and she stood on tiptoes, as she slipped her arms around his shoulders to steady herself against him, lifting one thigh to wrap it against the roughness of his denim clad leg…._

_*_

_…She sighed again, and then lay in silence holding, and being held, just breathing together in post coital bliss. Nothing more until something occurred to her, and with a slightly teasing tone in her voice, she said, “You’re still wrong.”_

_That drew a low, languid chuckle from him, and he craned his neck a little to look down at her, as she looked up. “Trying for round two…?_ Miss _French?”_

She moaned softly, and pressed her head against her knees, bracing herself with fingertips on the floor. It was then that she felt it… the hum, the vibration, the living _heartbeat_ of this ship.

“Destiny,” she breathed.

She had seen that word, over and over again in some of the Ancient text that Rush had left her studying, not on the main pages though - the ones he had highlighted as important to discovering the secrets of the Ninth Chevron, but in those barely noticed appendixes and poorly photographed artifacts, all of those pages that everyone overlooked. Had Rush known? Did he _know_ that _this_ was where the ninth chevron would lead and kept it hidden from everyone? Could anyone _trust_ him? Could she, even after what they had shared in the past forty-eight hours? She looked around, trying to see him amid the chaos, but it was too dark, and there were too many people.

Doubt assailed her, fear and doubt, two sides of an unholy triangle that had dogged her life. Maybe if she kept to the shadows, no one would know she was there. She could keep to herself until she found Rush… found out what he knew; what everyone knew; found out where she stood. Why did she feel so threatened? At that moment she didn’t want them to know that she had made it through. Eli was bound to say something if he knew and if Rush proved difficult, and she knew he would. Eli would tell the others, the military on board that Rush wasn’t the only one that could understand the Ancient language better than his own, basic application. This was too much.

Slowly, biting her lip against the pain in her ankle, she pulled herself up. Clung to the wall for support, almost literally sliding through the shadows until she found the exit. Until she could practically fall around the frame of the doorway and out into the corridor beyond.

She followed her instinct, followed her nose, trying to keep her ears open for any sound of others leaving the room behind her, not knowing where she was going, but not wanting to go far. She found another doorway , this one with a closed door, but with a control to the left of it. She pressed, and the door slid aside, little more than a dark hole beyond, the lights burned out, all but one. It would do as a place to gather herself and _think_. She needed to speak to Rush, but… did she want to? Would _he_ want her to?

_”Miss French… Belle… we have to go!” Rush squeezed her hands so hard her fingers hurt. “We have to leave. Now. This planet isn’t safe. Icarus’ core is gonnae go critical.”_

_For a moment he pressed his forehead to hers._

_“Come with me…_ Please!”

She let the door close in the same instant that the world blurred and stretched around her, a brief, strange sensation passing thorugh her, and the hum around her, beneath her feet, increased. She pressed her forehead against the bulkhead.

“Destiny, where are you taking us?” she whispered.


	2. Powerplay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dialogue from the show remains the property of the writers - interpretations, however, are all mine!

If chaos had a persona, or even a personality, it would be the SG team and numerous civilians that had evacuated Icarus through the ‘Gate, but chaos wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, not in this instance. It afforded Rush the opportunity to pick himself up and get his bearings in what was _clearly_ a ship of Ancient origin.

He swore under his breath as he discovered his glasses were broken, no doubt in the none too gentle landing while making his way through the ‘Gate. Only to be expected, he supposed. The console in the ‘Gate room yielded no information that was useful, so he made he way silently up the steps to the gantry to look down upon the milling travelers.

If he were honest with himself - and why the hell should he break the habit of a lifetime now, just because he’d finally succeeded in dialing the ninth chevron address - his eyes were scanning the crowd of people for the diminutive form of Doctor French. He couldn’t see her, and a part of him felt the pain of guilt at that. If she hadn’t made it thought the ‘Gate, then she was still on Icarus, and if she stayed there…

He pushed the thought away, swallowing hard. He didn’t have time for worry, for regret - certainly not guilt. He had to get control of the ship; establish himself so that no one could push him around, _especially_ not Colonel Young. A slow, half smile settled onto his face as he looked down on everyone, still in chaos below, then, while everyone else was still gnashing their teeth in… whatever emotion it was they were feeling, he slipped out of the ‘Gate Room, and went to try and find somewhere more amenable to concentration and establishing control.

As if to underline the thought, or in agreement, he felt the rumble of movement beneath his feet, and in the following moment, for barely an instant longer than a heartbeat, everything around him seemed to stretch, slow, and recover all at the same time. The ship was moving and, he suspected, not through normal space. Setting his thoughts in better order, he reached out a hand to place his fingertips against the gray wall of the corridor beside him.

_Where are you taking us, my friend?_

It didn’t take more than a few steps after that for him to realize that although the ship _had_ a working life support, it wasn’t working very well. The air output was tepid and stale, and not the crisp cold he’d come to expect of a ship in perfect operation. No doubt he’d have to do something about that, not to mention find out where they were, because that would probably be the first question put to him, followed by, “…and how do we get back to Earth.”

That was what was _wrong_ with these people. No fucking imagination. _Christ, I need to think!_

A door ahead of him all but beckoned him, and he reached for the control at the side. The door slid open, parting in the center onto a breathtaking vista. An observation room stretched out in front of him, as though it were open to whatever space they traveled through, a bench to sit on, and a railing as though to prevent an observer from falling away, out into the Ancients’ version of Faster Than Light travel.

He stepped forward slowly, for the first time realizing his insignificance, while at the same time recognizing his part in this grand tapestry. It was a dichotomy that he found comforting as much as humbling, and humble wasn’t a word he often associated with himself. He stood, staring out at the blue-white vastness, letting his mind slow, calm, and become one with it.

_She should have been here._

The thought caught him off guard, along with the brief tightness it caused in his chest, and he took a breath, attempting to settle again, allowing the mesmeric passage through altered space to subsume him once more, and so he had no idea how long he’d been standing, still and silent, when the door behind him opened again.

“Sheesh… we’re on a ship?”

He couldn’t help but smile inwardly. Eli seemed to have a knack for stating the obvious. It was something that usually irritated the hell out of him, but in Eli, he found it… almost endearing.

“The design is clearly Ancient, in the truest sense of the word.” His voice came from somewhere inside of himself and he didn’t take his eyes from their unfocused gaze out into the voice. “Launched… hundreds of thousands of years ago.”

“Doctor Rush?” Lieutenant Scott’s voice drew him back closer to reality, and his voice took on emotion once again - a sense of wonder.

“Faster than light… Yet not through hyperspace.”

“What are you doing?”

“Who knows how far it’s traveled?”

“Doctor Rush,” Scott repeated, proving his earlier thoughts with the next words from his mouth. “We’ve got a lot of wounded. We need to get home.”

He blinked, sighing, but remained where he was, making no response, not even starting in surprise when Scott’s radio crackled to life, and the man answered, receiving the news from Miss Johansen - the expedition medic - because that was what this was now, an expedition, like any other.

_We’ve got a problem. One of the air vents just shut down in here._

“Copy that,” Scott answered with a sigh.

“Yeah, the air’s getting pretty thin in here too,” Eli said, and he found himself surprised that they were only just noticing that now.

“What does that mean,” Scott asked.

“That the life support system is failing,” Rush said, hating to state the obvious himself, but since Scott was asking, and Eli was making the observations, he felt it necessary. He started to turn as he finished, “And we should probably do something about that.”

To his great relief, Scott left him to get on with the business of doing just that once they’d reached a room where there were a number of consoles like the one in the ‘Gate room, and to Eli’s credit - though he annoyingly watched every single button press and read every single screen too closely over his shoulder - he too allowed him to get on with his work.

All just as well, really. It was one thing having the luxury of time in which to translate Ancient texts and to make sense of the syntax, to parse the full meaning of what was there, it was quite something else to do so ‘live’ and under pressure, as it were. This was why he’d needed a linguist… and why he _still_ needed one. _Damn the woman! Why didn’t she listen to me?_

Had he been too hard on her? She’d called him arrogant, and maybe she was right, but he was right too - he’d been called worse - and he truly did see it as confidence; a confidence born of having to _fight_ his way up from the gutters of Glasgow, to prove his own worth at Oxford and afterwards, until coming to the attention of the Stargate Program, ironically in very much the same sort of way as he’d found Eli, and in much the same way that he’d recruited Miss French. That was not lost on him.

He remembered, then, as he struggled with the Ancient, the moment they’d first met. He hadn’t been exactly cordial, but then again, he hadn’t been anything other than himself either. Waiting for her to arrive in the lecture hall where she’d been informed that she’d have to give her lecture. He’d arranged that, of course; pulled strings so that he would meet the woman on _his_ territory, put her on the back foot right away. He _had_ to have her agreement, by fair means or foul.

_“I’m sorry,” she called out and it sounded to him as though she were trying not to appear irritated. She hadn’t succeeded in that. “Excuse me, but I think there’s been some kind of a mistake.”_

_He looked up at her then, and his eyes widened in surprise. He hadn’t known what to expect - the picture in her file had been from many years previous - first year of college, maybe - and she had her doctorate now. He hadn’t expected such stunning beauty, nor the inescapable pull of her deep blue eyes, even narrowed as they were, in suspicion. He took a breath, and carefully schooled his face into his usual, sardonic expression._

_“No,” he said “I don’t think so.”_

_“Oh, really?” she said, coming to a halt and folding her arms across her breasts. “And how do you figure that?”_

_“Belle French, isn’t it?” he asked, with exaggerated patience._

_She blinked, and he watched as many emotions flashed through her eyes, eventually settling into a kind of worried panic, before she squeaked out, “My father...!”_

_“Moe French?” He didn’t go on until she nodded her confirmation, and when he did, he didn’t hold back his opinion of the man. “Useless waste of space by all accounts. You on the other hand--”_

_“I beg your pardon!” she snapped._

_“Oh, come now, Miss French,” he scoffed with brittle, dry sarcasm, “Let’s not start lying to one another now . You have a very low opinion of your father.”_

_“That may be true,” she admitted curtly, “but that doesn’t give you free reign to speak ill of him. If there’s any of that to be done, I’ll be the one to call him out.” He sighed, and watched her bristle even more before she demanded, “Who the hell are you anyway?”_

_“Rush,” he said. “Doctor Nicholas Rush.”_

_“And I suppose you’re going to tell me that this is your lecture hall, and that I’m going to have to go find some place else?”_

_“It used to be mine, but not any more,” he said, starting to peel himself from the chalkboard, and walking her way for just a couple of steps._

_“Used to be?” she snapped with a frown._

_“I used to work here,” he said as though it were obvious._

_“Well, I’m sure this little tour of nostalgia is all well and good,” she told him, “but I’m due to give a lecture in here in…” she looked at her watch and her frown deepened. He knew she would, by now, have seen that it was actually_ past _time for her lecture to have begun, and of course, there were no students in attendance. Nor would there be; another thing he’d arranged._

_“There won’t be a lecture, Miss French,” he said, and set down the to-go coffee cup on the desk where he’d earlier set the file containing the images of the Ancient texts and artifacts._

_“No lecture?” she demanded, “What—”_

_“Your students have been told that you’re feeling unwell and—”_

_“How dare you!” she tried to interject, but he just continued talking._

_“—my friend and I would very much like to have a word with you, if you don’t mind. It is rather urgent.”_

He shook his head at the memory, and at the following one of their confrontation in the mess hall, trying to push thoughts of her from his mind before he ended up lost in their last encounter, in his quarters on board the _Hammond_.

_He grasped her wrists, tugging her closer and trapped her arms between them. She gasped as he did, cutting off what she’d been saying. He dipped his head, crushing his mouth to hers, unable not to, her inner fire calling to him. She stiffened, but only for a heartbeat, before she opened to his kiss, kissing him back with equal want - equal passion even as she tried to wrest her hands from his tight grasp._

He leaned back for a moment to stretch out a kink in his back from hunching close to the console to compensate for not having a working pair of spectacles.

_Damn it!_ He needed her now; her expertise. Why had he not _insisted_ she go through the ‘Gate with him, dragged her through if necessary.

He navigated to another screen on the display, running tired and gritty eyes rapidly over the Ancient text, guessing at unfamiliar terms from context and what he _did_ remember of the lexicon in his head until some of it finally started to make sense, and he made keystrokes, and swipes on the screen to enable him to reach the reset dialog for the life support system.

“What are you doing?” Eli’s hushed, and worried accusation was like a slap to the side of his face.

“What do you mean, what am I doing?” he demanded, “I’m doing as I said I would and trying to fix the life support.

“But…” Eli stammered, “but that’s not right, what you’re doing there, that screen says—”

Anger flared from deep inside his belly. How _dare_ this young upstart question him, question his actions.

“You have no idea what the screen says,” he argued, starting to raise his voice, but Eli matched him, and somewhere in the back of his head he started to hear measured footsteps becoming hurried ones.

“I read it over your shoulder,” Eli protested, also raising his voice, “And I’m telling you this is the wrong—”

“You have neither the knowledge, not the experience—” Rush started, before Master Sergeant Greer’s voice cut across their verbal sparring.

“What’s going on in here?” he demanded, as he and Scott, and Brody and Park besides, hurried in.

“The life support system is on,” he told them, explaining as if to a group of three year olds, “but for some reason, it’s not working properly. I’m attempting to reset it.”

He watched, feeling a sharp pang of betrayal as Eli turned to Lieutenant Scott and said, “He has no idea what he’s doing.”

In that moment the room descended into chaos and he frowned as he found himself staring down the business end of Greer’s weapon in the instant before he started arguing with Eli about what the boy _thought_ he read on the screen. To his credit, Eli was arguing robustly, even if he were wrong, which in all honesty, he had to admit to himself, he wasn’t entirely convinced he was. A lull in their argument was followed by another flare of tension as the volatile sergeant threatened him with violence if he did what he _had_ to do and reset the life support system. It was a stand off, and an uncomfortable one at that, until even _he_ finally had enough of the testosterone overload, not to mention the crushing headache he was beginning to suffer, from the combined lack of oxygen, and eyestrain.

“I am gonna press that button. It’s gonna fix the life support,” he said with a calm he did not truly feel, “and then you and I, and everyone else, will be able to breathe, and _think_ much better.” He gave Greer a sour look, truly at the end of his rope with the man who had been locked up on Icarus for a previous altercation between the two of them, in which the sergeant had well and truly been in the wrong - and thank God Colonel Young had seen it that way too - but here, now, though the man was only _probably_ in the wrong, he really didn’t have time for his macho bullshit.

“Now, you can shoot me for that if you like,” he said, adding sarcastically, “But if, however, there are any negative consequences in resetting the system, I suggest you might still need me… to help resolve them.”

As he expected, Greer didn’t listen, leaving it up to Scott to _finally_ pull his finger out of his arse and use his authority to order the man to put down his fucking gun and act like a reasonable adult and not like an adolescent locked into a permanent tantrum.

It took a while, the two of them continuing their staring match even as Lieutenant Scott moved to give that order, and keep a downward pressure on Greer’s arm until, with an almost maniacal chuckle, still not breaking eye contact with Rush, the man finally complied. Only then did Rush, as Greer had already done, lower his gaze to watch as he engaged the reset button on the console.

There was an almost squeaky click as he depressed the button, holding his breath, though he would never admit that to another living soul, and then…

…nothing.

Inside, as Eli stepped forward to examine the display, to read for himself what he had already figured out the moment his finger left the button, a knot tightened inside of him. Frustration warred with feelings of anger; at himself, at the ship… the situation - everything.

“So?” Scott asked, and he could have screamed.

Instead he set his calmest, most sour expression on his face, and with as much sarcasm as he had the energy for and could muster, said, “Well, I suppose that would have been too simple,” before he simply turned and walked away.


	3. Guardian

_"But what if we’re not supposed to_ be _…_ here _.”_

_Belle staggered as the ground beneath her feet seemed to tilt sideways as she all but ran into the Icarus ‘Gateroom, and she reached out to steady herself against the nearest, seemingly stable, thing, which just happened to be Doctor Rush. He looked her way briefly, before looking back to Eli, ready to argue._

_“Eli’s right,” she said before he could utter a word, and then snatched her hand back as if she suddenly remembered everything that had passed between them, and the heat of touching him again scalded her. He turned and glared at her, so she opened the file she was carrying, and began rifling through the pages inside, almost scattering them all at the next lurch beneath their feet, listening as Eli carefully explained his thinking to Rush and they argued back and forth._

_“Like a code,” Eli said at last._

_“A code?” Rush asked, his tone incredulous._

_“Eli’s right,” she repeated, stepping up now that she had the translation she’d been looking for. “See here…?_ Terra _, the Ancient’s word for Earth.”_

_He all but snatched the paper from her hand and peered at both the Ancient text, and her carefully written translation._

_“Fuck,” Rush breathed, then turning to Riley ordered, “Stop the dialing sequence!”_

Belle woke with a start. She couldn’t remember having fallen asleep, but within the storage locker, if the space she occupied could be called that, the air was thinner than it had been. She reached out and pressed her fingers against the bulkhead beside her.

“Come on, Old Girl,” she whispered. “It isn’t that bad, and we need you…”

She swallowed hard. She was going to need to move from her enclosure, otherwise she would probably be the first to succumb to the increasing levels of carbon dioxide. The ship’s hull _hummed_ beneath her fingertips, tingling up along her arm, and her head began to fill with whispers… indistinct, like many voices speaking all at once.

“Sshh,” she almost sobbed, “Please…”

Then forcing herself to her feet, she slid along the wall to the door and opened it, wincing at the overly loud sound it seemed to make, and slipped through the opening.

Not that the air in the corridor was much fresher, but it was better than the small space in whuch she had hidden herself, and she sucked in huge lungs full of it, until its stale quality made her start to cough. Fearing discovery, she forced herself to normal breathing, and began to walk along the corridor, looking for a better place to hide.

Hide.

She didn’t know why, but it felt like the right thing to do, even though the tangled whispers resolved, for just a moment into a single breath.

_Rush_.

“No,” she said aloud, as if the whispers in her head were the second party in a conversation. “That’s not what I need right now! Not what _any_ of us need.”

_Rush_.

She opened her mouth to argue again, but stopped herself before any words could escape concerning Rush, then physically stopped herself from moving, leant down to rest her hands on her knees, as if she were winded. As she caught her breath, the whispering faded; her head cleared.

Finally confident that she was no longer going to pass out, and that she wasn’t going completely mad, she straightened up and began to walk slowly along the corridors and passageways of the ship. She moved without thought, almost literally letting her feet guide her; when to turn, when to continue straight, which doorways to avoid at all costs… Finally she arrived at an elevator that seemed to have only one choice of direction: Down.

She stepped onto the elevator, and before she could even look for a button to press to activate the conveyance, the doors closed behind her, and the elevator began an almost leisurely descent. It seemed to take an age before the elevator came to a halt, and another before anything else happened, and when it did, Belle found her heart beginning to race.

From the ceiling above a sheet of iridescent light began to move slowly, front to back, like a curtain or wall that moved toward her inexorably, even as she backed away from the oncoming cascade. At the same time, a breeze, that became a rapid blast of air rose up from the floor of the elevator, billowing, cutting through her clothing as surely as a biting winter wind in Boston might have done.

She expected pain, the price of some kind of trespass, instead, when the light first touched her fingertips - her hands outstretched as though to ward it off - she felt a tingling kind of warmth; a sensation not unlike being tickled. Then as though the elevator could sense her thoughts, her feelings, a soft voice sounded calmly from all around her.

“Do not be alarmed,” the voice said - female and gentle. Motherly. “The decontamination process will take only seconds, and is not in any way harmful to you. Please try to relax.”

For a moment, Belle doubted herself then, wondering if perhaps the voice were imagined, like the whispers in her head. Just as she was about to dismiss it all as fantasy or nightmare - both perhaps - the light that had passed over her dimmed and then winked out.

The doors in front of her parted with the clockwork sound of the lock disengaging as it did, and Belle found herself staring into what seemed like an endless room of glass and computer workstations, and before her, on a slightly raised dais, stood a single, solitary figure.

Her face was young, but her eyes were old; old and deep and dark, as though they had seen millenia. From the slightly translucent quality of the figure in front of her, it was fairly obvious to Belle that it was a hologram or a recording of some other kind, an automated guardian of… whatever it was that Belle was facing.

“Welcome, Belle French,” the figure said. “I am Myana, and I have been waiting for you.”

Hesitantly, she stepped from the elevator, looking behind her and then back at the woman - what had she called herself - Myana? Before asking, “H- how did you…?”

“Know your name?” Myana asked as Belle broke off suddenly, turning full circle to look at the everything around her, even as the woman continued. “Your coming was predicted even before we launched, we were just uncertain when it would be, and so, in each generation of even our long life, one of us was chosen to wait - as Guardian - for you. I am the last.”

“Me?” Belle questioned incredulously. “But you… But I…”

“I understand your confusion,” Myana said softly.

“No.” Belle shook her head. “No, I don’t think you do. I didn’t even know about _any_ of this until Doctor Rush came to find me at the university. I wasn’t even going to come, and—”

“And yet, you did.” Myana gave her a gentle smile. “Please, come. Sit.” She gestured toward a seat in the middle of the room, one that looked out into the flashing stream of lights outside of the wall of glass. “There is much we must discuss.”

Though she moved to perch on the edge of the chair in question, Belle shook her head and said, “We can’t… at least not until we find a way to fix the air. Everyone is asphyxiating out there. Can you help us with that?”

“Alas, I cannot,” the hologram was even sorrowful as she answered. “Not directly anyway.”

“What do you mean?” Belle asked and she frowned as a transparent display suddenly came to life before her eyes. There were many bright pinpoints which she assumed were stars that were lit up on the image. One of them was highlighted by the manner of its pulsing.

“It is only a slight detour,” Myana said, “but I believe that in this galaxy, your people may find what they need.”

Belle settled back a little at that, and though she _knew_ there had been no perceptible change in the rumbling accompaniment to the progress Destiny was making through whatever realm it was they traveled, she _felt_ the shift in course all the same.


End file.
